Generic Company Place Holder Search Engine Security

The Search Engine Security add-on for Firefox aims to
thwart online attacks that start with fake search engine results,
and end with a malware infection. This free add-on can help defend
against "poison" Web sites--but it may alter benign pages as
well.

Online attackers often use an evil form of search engine
optimization to make their poisoned
site links appear in search results for popular and newsy
topics. Unsuspecting surfers who click a poisoned search result may
end up on a page that might try to surreptitiously locate software
flaws and install Trojans or other malware. Other malicious pages
might attempt to trick surfers into installing fake antivirus
programs.

According
to Zscaler, the company that makes Search Engine Security,
these malicious pages typically trigger when they see someone
coming by way of a popular search engine, such as Bing, Google or
Yahoo. If the user comes upon the poisoned page directly, the site
doesn't launch an attack. The pages are able to see where browsers
came from by looking at the referrer tag, which is contained within
the URL you use to reach a search engine result.

The Search Engine Security add-on works by rewriting that
referrer tag so that malicious sites won't be able to tell when you
come from a search engine result. By default, it works for Bing, Google,
or Yahoo, and will use a referrer tag you can set in the add-ons
options.

While Search Engine Security's obfuscation may work to thwart
sites that use poisoned search results, it may also change your
experience on benign pages that use the referrer tag to display a
customized page when they see you coming from a search engine. If
you can manually list such sites in an optional whitelist then the
add-on won't activate for them. Customizations might be as simple
as displaying something like "Welcome, Google user," or it might be
more.

If you want maximum security for your Firefox browser, then
Search Engine Security can help. Just keep in mind that some benign
pages may also display differently with this addon. And don't
forget the two mainstays of good PC security: Using a good
antivirus app and keeping all your software up-to-date. For keeping
software updated, I like Secunia
PSI.

Note: This link takes you to the add-on's page
at Mozilla.org, where you can automatically install the file into
your Firefox browser.

--Erik Larkin

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